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A sliding-scale subscription model would be nice, where I could say "I'll pay $100 per month and have no adverts at all" or "I'll only $5 per month, and I'm hap

A sliding-scale subscription model would be nice, where I could say "I'll pay $100 per month and have no adverts at all" or "I'll only $5 per month, and I'm happy to have a lot of adverts". But the advertisers probably want access to the kind of people who are prepared to part with a lot of money to avoid advertising. You see this in the FT and Economist where it's more expensive to advertise to subscribers, because the advertisers know those people have higher disposable income. If all they can have access to is lower-paid people, I guess there’s a risk a lot of the advertisers will not bother. Maybe there's just an inherent problem here. News can be good quality, independent from government, free from advertising, and available to all. But it can't be all of those things at the same time at a national level.

mr__y 7y ago
>"I'll pay $100 per month and have no adverts at all" or "I'll only $5 per month, and I'm happy to have a lot of adverts". there is another problem with that model. As long as ads revenue is a significant portion of publisher's income there is a risk of advertisers influencing the content. At $100/month you won't see the ads, but the news themselves could still be influenced by advertisers in some way. I'm afraid that this would need all or nothing approach to be effective.
ksec 7y ago
I am afraid there is a high probability in that $100 wont work. And the question is a little more complex. This is not about I am willing to paid $100 to get rid of ads as the OP stated, it is how many are willing to paid $100. Or more precisely, we need X ( Say 10 ) monthly million revenue form customers to sustain the business. Are there enough customers to share the $10 million expense. We could price it at $50, are there 200K customers wiling to subscribe, and if not, how many more paying the $5 + Ads will make it sustainable. Given the Ads money with the $5 subscription will be lower since the subscribers of $5 are likely not worth anywhere as much as the $50. Like you said most of the high paying subscribers are already concentrated in FT , Economist or WSJ. And precisely the reason why Apple news didn't include any of those three. They still dont get it. It might work for casual, gaming, sports magazine. Not Quality Daily news.

mr__y 7y ago

>"I'll pay $100 per month and have no adverts at all" or "I'll only $5 per month, and I'm happy to have a lot of adverts". there is another problem with that model. As long as ads revenue is a significant portion of publisher's income there is a risk of advertisers influencing the content. At $100/month you won't see the ads, but the news themselves could still be influenced by advertisers in some way. I'm afraid that this would need all or nothing approach to be effective.

ksec 7y ago

I am afraid there is a high probability in that $100 wont work. And the question is a little more complex. This is not about I am willing to paid $100 to get rid of ads as the OP stated, it is how many are willing to paid $100. Or more precisely, we need X ( Say 10 ) monthly million revenue form customers to sustain the business. Are there enough customers to share the $10 million expense. We could price it at $50, are there 200K customers wiling to subscribe, and if not, how many more paying the $5 + Ads will make it sustainable. Given the Ads money with the $5 subscription will be lower since the subscribers of $5 are likely not worth anywhere as much as the $50. Like you said most of the high paying subscribers are already concentrated in FT , Economist or WSJ. And precisely the reason why Apple news didn't include any of those three. They still dont get it. It might work for casual, gaming, sports magazine. Not Quality Daily news.